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Title: Gene Kelly: A Life of Dance and Dreams by Alvin Yudkoff ISBN: 0-8230-8819-7 Publisher: Watson-Guptill Publications Pub. Date: 01 September, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 2.67 (18 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Nothing New on Kelly Here
Comment: The author tries, but fails, to adequately tell Gene Kelly's life story. There are so few materials on the life and career of Kelly that this book was eagerly anticipated by his fans. Unfortnately, this one doesn't make the grade. In his "novel" approach, the author attempts to crawl inside Kelly's mind as he sits watching the American Film Institute Awards in the 1980s. He thinks Kelly's thoughts and presents them to readers, as though he inhabits a secret corner of the choreographer/dancer's mind and is literally giving us "the inside scoop" on how Kelly felt about his life, career, and relationships. He also invites himself into closed door sessions (where he couldn't possibly have known what was being said between Kelly and Mayer, Kelly and Betsy Blair, Kelly and Jeanne Coyne, Kelly and Donen, etc.). The result is half novel/half biography, all failure. When the author finally does climb out of Kelly's mind back into the reality of the dancer's life, he doesn't get all of his facts straight. In one instance he reports that Vera Ellen saluted Kelly at the American Film Institute Awards. If so, she did it from the netherworld. Ellen had been dead for several years by the time of the AFI awards.
For some odd reason writers have a hard time writing about Kelly and doing it well. Perhaps it is because Kelly's life is devoid of serious scandel; there is nothing scurrilous on which to hang juicy rumors. Let's hope, then, that Kelly's widow, Pat Ward, will soon release the biography that Kelly, himself, was working on the last few years of his life. Then we'll REALLY know what Kelly was thinking, and not have to rely upon second-hand Kelly-think.
Rating: 2
Summary: POSTSCRIPT
Comment: This is a postscript to my review titled "The Book Who Couldn't Dance." For me, the last straw comes on Page 218, when Yudkoff botches his description of the "Singin' in the Rain" number. It's one thing for Yudkoff to botch the numbers in LIVING IN A BIG WAY, which after all is a fairly obscure film -- though NOT impossible to view -- but to botch the most famous Kelly number in SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, the most famous Kelly film of all time?! Well, how can you trust ANYTHING in the book after that?
Rating: 2
Summary: THE BOOK WHO COULDN'T DANCE
Comment: I'm up to page 185, and fully intend to finish the whole book, but I thought I'd look it up here at Amazon.com to see if I could learn anything about the author's credentials -- the paperback offers none -- and, also, see how other readers had felt about the book. For me, it started strong with the Pittsburgh material and New York days, the formative years of Kelly's life with which I was so unfamiliar. But the deeper I've gotten into the book, the more I've discovered such careless mistakes (see the other Reader Reviews) that I can't help but worry about the veracity in the earlier passages as well. (Incidentally, one whopper which no one else has mentioned is that Yudkoff completely reverses the production sequence of THE PIRATE and EASTER PARADE, which in turn leads to many misstatements of fact.) I was willing to tolerate the infamous AFI interior monlogues -- at least, unlike Reagan's biographer, Yudkoff didn't attempt to pass himself off as one of Kelly's dancing partners -- but by this point in the book I'm finding myself very annoyed with all the sloppy mistakes. And now, thanks to the Reader Reviews, I see that Yudkoff is going to leave me in the lurch after 1952, which is frankly infuriating. And, yes, disappointing.
POSTSCRIPT: I kept on reading, and it got even worse. Yudkoff's description of the title number in SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, incredibly, is erroneous in its description. It's one thing for Yudkoff to fudge the descriptions of the dances in LIVING IN A BIG WAY, an obscure -- though not IMPOSSIBLE to view -- Kelly movie, but to blow the facts on his most famous number in his most famous film...!
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Title:Gene Kelly - Anatomy of a Dancer ASIN: B00006FDCQ Publisher: Warner Home Video Pub. Date: 24 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.98 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $22.48 |
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Title: Steps in Time by Fred Astaire ISBN: 0815410581 Publisher: Cooper Square Publishers Pub. Date: June, 2000 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: TAP! The Greatest Tap Dance Stars and Their Stories 1900-1955 by Rusty E. Frank ISBN: 0306806355 Publisher: Da Capo Press Pub. Date: 01 April, 1995 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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Title:Gene Kelly Collection (Singin' in the Rain / An American in Paris / On the Town / Anatomy of a Dancer) ASIN: B00006JMSZ Publisher: Warner Home Video Pub. Date: 16 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $52.92 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $46.04 |
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Title:Cover Girl ASIN: B00009ZPU1 Publisher: Columbia Tristar Hom Pub. Date: 19 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $22.46 |
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